Queen Victoria to Viscount Palmerston.
Windsor Castle, 11th February 1860.
The Queen acknowledges the receipt of Lord Palmerston's two letters of yesterday evening. She willingly accepts Lord John Russell's expressions of regret, and certainly was led to read that one passage which Lord Palmerston explains in the sense which he supposed.
The Queen has received the draft to Lord Cowley, and has written her observations upon it to Lord John, who will communicate them to him. She thinks that the omissions which she has pointed out can be very well supplied consistently with that international courtesy which Lord Palmerston truly says ought to be observed.11
Footnote 11: In this despatch, Lord John wrote that the Government could not believe that a country in the circumstances of France could be endangered by the existence, "on the other side of the Alps, of a State of 11,000,000 of people lately joined by a cement not yet dry, threatened, on the side of Lombardy, by Austria, and not very certain of its own independence."
Earl Granville to the Prince Albert.
Brighton, 11th February 1860.
Sir,—Lord John produced before the Cabinet his draft of despatch in answer to M. Thouvenel. He read, without allusion to the previous correspondence, the Queen's Memorandum on his draft.
Lord Palmerston supported Lord John, who was fidgety and nervous. We all criticised the draft. We thought it too much or too little. We recommended that he should either write shortly, saying that he did not acquiesce in M. Thouvenel's arguments, but as the French Government did not consider the question as now in existence, and promised that it should not be revised without the consent of Savoy, and consultation with the Great Powers, if the Government would reserve what they had to say on a question of such immense European importance—or going into the subject he should state the whole argument and objections of the Government to the scheme.
We thought the historical reminiscences offensive to France, while the language of the despatch was not sufficiently firm to satisfy what was expected from the Government. We warned him that in this case public opinion would be at least as critical as the Queen.